GMAT introduces two kinds of pronoun errors:
- Pronoun Reference Errors
- Pronoun –Antecedent Agreement Errors
Pronoun Reference Error
As we saw in this post, pronouns are used in place of nouns to make the sentence more readable and clearly communicate the meaning of the sentence. This implies that when the reader reads a sentence that uses pronouns, he/she must be able to clearly understand what or who this pronoun refers to. If there is any ambiguity in this reference, then the sentence has pronoun reference error. For example:
Mary and Susie run a cooking show in which she primarily does the cooking and she does the narration.
The pronouns are shaded as shown. Clearly, after reading the sentence, one cannot tell who does the cooking and who does the narration. Thus, this sentence has pronoun reference error. This can be corrected by replacing the pronouns altogether.
Mary and Susie run a cooking show in which Mary primarily does the cooking and Susie does the narration.
But now consider the sentence as shown below.
Mary and Tom run a cooking show in which she primarily does the cooking and he does the narration.
In the above sentence, since the gender of the two subjects is different, there is no ambiguity in pronoun reference. It is obvious that Mary does the cooking and Tom does the narration. Thus, this sentence is correct as is.
Pronoun Antecedent Agreement Errors
Apart from pronoun reference being clear, the pronoun and the noun that it refers to should agree in number. That is, if the noun that the pronoun refers to is singular, then the pronoun should also be singular. If the noun that the pronoun refers to is plural, then the pronoun should also be plural. For example:
Even though the team had practiced very hard, they lost the game by a huge margin.
In this sentence, it is very clear that “they” refers to “team”. So there is no pronoun reference error. However, since team is a collective noun, it is singular and this pronoun-antecedent pair does not agree in number. This can be corrected by changing “they” to “it”.
Even though the team had practiced very hard, it lost the game by a huge margin.
In order to detect pronoun errors, we suggest following approach:
- Understand the meaning of the sentence.
- Divide the sentence into its individual clauses.
- Identify the pronouns and determine the possible antecedents.
- Determine if there is any ambiguity in the use of pronoun.
- Ensure that pronoun and antecedent agree in number.
- Be cognizant of the nouns that are always singular.
The above is covered comprehensively in the following concepts
Pronouns (available in free trial for registered e-GMAT users)
Always Singular Subjects
In addition, read this post for more details on pronoun reference error as tested on GMAT.
